This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Drone technology has reached the point where companies such as Amazon and DHL are proposing their use for package delivery. Due to their weight and freedom of movement, drones offer improvements in speed and cost of delivery. Other uses include first-aid assistants, emergency monitoring, and fast-food delivery.
As found in the state of the art as of the time of this invention, drones are required to provide all of their own locomotive power. However, a major technical limitation of current drones is their range, which reduces their serviceable market. This limitation is due to the capacity of their energy store, such as batteries, in relation to the weight of the vehicle. The range of such drones is currently extended through various recharging strategies, energy density, and aerodynamics.
Certain prior inventions discuss overcoming limitations of drones. US 2014/0254896 A1 discusses unmanned drone, robot system for delivering mail, goods, humanoid security, crisis negotiation, mobile payments, smart humanoid mailbox and wearable personal exoskeleton heavy load flying machine. Vertical take-off and landing multimodal, multi-environment, gyropendular craft with compensatory propulsion and fluidic gradient collimation is discussed in US 2013/0206915 A1, which is an example of how to land in various environments. Transportation using network of unmanned aerial vehicles in US 2014/0032034 describes a system of deliveries that utilizes drones and base stations. A method of and apparatus for extending the operation of an unmanned aerial vehicle in EP 2664539 A1 describes a method for extending operation through detecting a recharging need, although such a system requires specialized infrastructure distributed throughout a region. Vehicle base station of U.S. Pat. No. 8,862,288 describes a platform on which a drone can swap its battery. Such an approach requires a network of such platforms.
The current invention moves beyond these techniques and materials.